Viver como deuses, morrer como moscas

“Everyday miracles we take for granted — bananas in the grocery store; you can walk into a Whole Foods and buy snow crabs from Alaska — I mean it’s just. … It’s this kind of stuff I think that has really changed the way we think and the way we view the world.

The most powerful woman 2000 years ago was Cleopatra, and her idea of a good time was to row up and down the Nile, having 60 men — with some encouragement from the whip and the lash — pull her up and down the Nile. Well, you yoke 60 men to some oars and you can generate six horsepower: about what we have in a lawnmower. A typical driver has 200 horsepower at their command. There was no engine on the planet 200 years ago much larger than 30 horsepower. And now every American has access to an engine that is six times larger than that you could have found on the surface of the globe 200 years ago. We’re climbing up the heat ladder. …

We’re living like gods right now. And our challenge is to figure out how to return to earth, how to become mortal again. In an energy sense, we’re not living like royalty. We’re not living like Cleopatra. We’re living like gods. And this life has made us sort of insane. …

Living like gods, we have no experience with going sailing off a depletion cliff. We have no cultural strength or wisdom that would really guide us in this moment. What do we do?